About
Jan Marshall paintings and drawings
artist, painter, contemporary art, contemporary artist, contemporary painter, contemporary paintings, contemporary fine art, contemporary fine artist, contemporary painter, Arizona artist, Arizona painter, Southwest artist, Southwest painter, color field artist, color field painter, Jan Marshall, Jan Marshall art, Jan Marshall artist, Jan Marshall painter, Jan Marshall paintings, Janet Marshall, Janet M Marshall, Janet Marie Marshall, Jan M Marshall
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Jan Marshall has been creating art since the 1970s with painting and drawing being the primary focus of her practice and the disciplines in which she earned her BA. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions over the last thirty years and can be found in private collections throughout the United States.
Exploring a contemplative relationship with nature and humanity, her paintings and drawings reference landscapes of both the psyche and the physical world. Throughout her painting career, Jan has worked in series, with each series following a concept through related expressions of time, space, or place. The paintings have varied in size from small-scale individual pieces to triptychs up to seventeen feet wide. Working primarily in oil, pastel, watercolor, and ink, she depicts these relationships with subtle transitions of color and minimal form.
In addition to her studio practice and exhibition schedule, Jan has been engaged with arts organizations in the capacities of curator, juror, panelist and board member.
Jan Marshall resides in Prescott, Arizona, with her husband, sculptor Joseph McShane. She is currently working on series of paintings that explore connections, tensions and the balance between the physical and metaphysical worlds.
Statement
Art illuminates my world. It is the window through which I interpret the paradoxes of life’s wonders and challenges.
Through my work I explore a contemplative relationship with nature and humanity: landscapes of the spirit that seek to convey the experience and mystery of existence. Endeavoring to express insights and emotions emerging out of meditation and observations of nature, I embrace color and form to evoke energy and tranquility simultaneously. This introspective journey is depicted through subtle transitions of color and minimal form, with a richness of surface achieved through luminous layers of oil paint, translucent layers of watercolor and ink, and saturated layers of pastel. Evoking questions, emotions, and insights, the works are visual poems inviting the viewer to seek a contemplative experience with the art.
My paintings and drawings are abstract with reference to landscapes of both the psyche and the physical world. Working in series, I often develop pieces in pastel or watercolor before continuing to canvas. The paintings vary in size from small-scale individual pieces to triptychs up to seventeen feet wide. Each series comprises multiple works and follows a concept through related expressions of time, space, or place. The collections of work exhibit well independently or in combinations. Each series is unique, yet clearly evolves from and relates to the others.
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The bodies of work in the For Others and Passage, series of pastels and oil paintings all began with the pastel Passage, one. I was moved by this piece and kept thinking about it for months, as I worked on other paintings. I finally knew that I needed to explore Passage as a series and what evolved from that one pastel was to become a significant body of work over the next several years.
For Others and Passage are interpretations of how I visualize breath. The scale of the largest paintings in the For Others series is a deliberate reference to myself. Each of the panels of the seventeen-foot wide oil on canvas triptychs are five-and-a-half feet by five-and-a-half feet; human scale, my height, my essence. Inspired by a meditation practice of forgiveness, each panel is breath. Breathing in the darkness, transforming it, and breathing out the light. Breathing in challenges and difficulties, and breathing out forgiveness. This meditation practice may seem counter-intuitive, but it is a profound form of meditation that has been a great gift in my life.
Like the For Others paintings, Passage is about breath. The lines evoke the gap between the in-breath and out-breath where transformation can occur. Again, breathing in the darkness, pausing, transforming it, and breathing out the light. In the For Others paintings the gap is portrayed with a literal gap between the panels of the triptych. In Passage it is the lines.
Connection oil on canvas and pastel triptychs are explorations of line and space at the intersection of the earth and ether of my imagination. The elements of the pastel triptychs are separated with spaces between. The oils are separate panels attached together with a tight line of connection.
Art Gallery at Sam Hill Warehouse | Prescott, Arizona
Patinas of Memory oil paintings are explorations of the multifaceted nature of emotions and the sensations of feelings. This series of paintings is related to the earlier Passage and For Others paintings, but the physicality of the paint in the Patinas of Memory paintings is more textural and the panels of the diptychs and triptychs are attached together rather than being separated by a physical space. The Time Becomes Visible and Layers of Time series of pastels led to the Patinas of Memory oil paintings.
As I work on these ongoing series of paintings I often reflect on the lines of Leonard Cohen.
~ There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. ~
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Refuge | Edges of Memory | Essence | Emergence | Vapor of Memory | Measure of Silence | The Space Between
The intimate landscapes of the psyche and the vast landscapes of the Southwest, Colorado Plateau and Great Basin have influenced my imagination for decades. The paintings in these series exploring the phenomena I experience include watercolors and inks on canvas in the ongoing series Refuge, Edges of Memory, Essence, Emergence, Vapor of Memory, Measure of Silence, and The Space Between.
Refuge and Edges of Memory ink on canvas paintings are distillations of my work to minimal form. The paintings in these series are contemplations of line, color and landscape, passions of my art, and meditations on presence. As with all of my work, these inks on canvas are executed with freehand brush work. The paintings are meditations both in the focused presence necessary for the creation of the work and in viewing the completed work.
Essence, V | Essence, II | Essence I | ink on canvas | 30″ x 12″ each
Essence ink on canvas paintings have been inspired by the imagined color and purity of air and breath; wisps of ethereal essence to meditate on.
Emergence series of ink on canvas paintings and small-scale watercolor and ink on paper works began as I transitioned from some challenging years. The stillness and glow observed in a calm horizon inspired these interpretations of interior and exterior landscape.
Chandler Center for the Arts | Chandler, Arizona
Vapor of Memory began as a series of small watercolors. I found their atmospheric quality captivating and thought I would one day express similar images in a larger format. The inks on canvas, that I began using in The Space Between series, became the ideal medium for the larger canvases of Vapor of Memory. I think of the work in this series as being about transition. They are contemplations of the confluence of mind, spirit and sky; spaces to fall into or move through, and physical and metaphorical visions of depth, dimension and void.
Measure of Silence ink on canvas paintings relate to the earlier The Space Between series, but transition from a panoramic format to a square or rectangular format, allowing for further expressions of line, space and landscape. These paintings evolved out of years of observing the vast horizon of the high desert landscape and the sea. As with The Space Between paintings, Measure of Silence explores my fascination with the horizontal line that forms where a receding landscape creates a crisp intersection at the horizon of earth or sky, and the lyrical play of color and light that occurs above and below that line.
Yavapai College Art Gallery | Prescott, Arizona
The Space Between watercolors and ink on canvas paintings evolved out of years of observing the vast horizon of the high desert landscape and the sea. I am intrigued by the horizontal line that forms where a receding landscape creates a crisp intersection at the horizon of earth or sky, and the lyrical play of color and light that occurs above and below that line. I seek to engage the viewer in that place where the edges of time and space intersect. Through the paintings I investigate the fleeting moment that we, as a species, occupy in the timeline of the world: suggesting that which existed before us and lies beneath us, and that which exists beyond us and above us.
Coconino Center for the Arts | Flagstaff, Arizona
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